Durgapur (Bengal): It is difficult to believe now that Durgapur was once one of the places that migrant labourers used to travel to, instead of from.
The area abutting Kolkata and spanning the Howrah, Hooghly and North 24 Parganas districts was not too long ago the hub of flourishing jute, automobile and metal industries. There were over 200 jute mills in Bengal at one point. There are now 54. Over a hundred small and big industry factories now lie closed in the city of Haldia which around a decade ago was still an active employment generator.
The picture of neglect to industry extends to the erstwhile automobile hub of Chittaranjan in the Paschim Bardhaman district, bordering Jharkhand in the east.
For labourers, both the state government and Union government have let them down. Through elections the issue of rekindling the region’s industrial dreams remains the only poll plank. This time is no exception.
An abandoned factory at Durgapur. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar
Durgapur Steel, in its heyday, had 35,000 employees. Now it has 11,000. Hooghly Alloy & Steels Co. Pvt. Ltd had 7,000. Now, it has none and the factory has shut down. Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation Ltd, too, had 7,000 and now boasts of little more than the lock on the gates.
The Bharat Ophthalmic Glass Limited had 1,500 employees. The factory now resembles a forested area. Durgapur Fertiliser, which once had 2,000, is on its last legs. Jessop & Co. Lts had 800 employees and has now shut down. RIC had 400 workers. It has none now.
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Biprendu Chakraborty has long since been a labour union leader at Durgapur. Chakraborty remembers the time when innovations, too, used to happen at Durgapur.
“Successive union governments have transformed profit-making industries into nothing. Add to that the fact that the current state government in Bengal has done little to help labourers. Elected leaders from Durgapur are always silent on industry, whether from the Bharatiya Janata Party or Trinamool Congress,” Chakraborty said.
Caustic soda from Durgapur Chemicals Limited had once captured the imagination of the export market as well. When the Left front government’s industries minister Nirupam Sen had attempted to modernise the production of this soda, he received interest from a firm that would also trade in the byproduct, chlorine gas. However, this project proved to be a no go.
The Bharat Ophthalmic Glass Limited factory at Durgapur. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar
Similar stories surround other efforts. The Bharat Ophthalmic Glass Limited was famed nationwide for ophthalmic glass that would be used as lenses. From the defence ministry to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the factory had an enviable list of customers. It is said that during the Kargil War, scientists and workers at these labs worked day and night to supply necessary materiel. Now, wilderness surrounds the BOGL’s factory.
The Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation Ltd saw some effort by former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. With then prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh in confidence, efforts were made for a consortium of the Bharat Earth Movers Limited, Coal India Limited and the Damodar Valley Corporation to buy out the company for Rs 100 crore. The Central Industrial Security Force was given charge of the protection of the factory. In 2011, the new state government under the TMC withdrew permission to the CISF. Loots and plundering followed.
Mahendra Singh was once an employee at the mining equipment making factory. “We needed modernisation, financial help and administrative assistance. We could have been saved,” he said.
The Chittaranjan Locomotive Works under the Union government had 17,000 employees in the 1990s. Now it has 9,412. With no new hirings, its strength is likely to deplete fast. The railway quarters across this sprawling campus are empty. All kinds of engines are still produced here, from the six-horsepower engine to that of the Vande Bharat, say workers. But that doesn’t necessarily bode well. For those workers, understandings with foreign companies have proven to be the death knell.
Durgapur candidates. From left, Dilip Ghosh, Kirti Azad (with Mamata Banerjee) and Sukriti Ghoshal (with Mohammed Salim).
Rajiv Gupta, who works there as a mechanic, says, “It is clear now that privatisation is the goal. But for the government, it has become very easy to ignore the work of labourers like me. We have written multiple times to MPs like Babul Supriyo and Shatrughna Sinha. But to no avail.”
A similar picture is seen in the case of Hindustan Cables at Rupnarayanpur. Workers sent multiple pleas to Babul Supriyo, who was junior minister for industry then. In 2017, the factory gave its last salary to its 500 workers and shut down. “We would send cables to the whole country from here,” says Meghnad Banerjee.
In his campaign rally at Durgapur, Union home minister Amit Shah said that he is certain that if BJP’s Dilip Ghosh is elected, all factories that have shut down will be reopened.
Trinamool Congress leader Nirendranath Chakraborty feels that this is tall talk for a party “who is responsible for Bengal’s current state.” “The factories will reopen only if they win, not otherwise. This makes BJP’s politics clear,” he said.
Taking on Dilip Ghosh are TMC’s Kirti Azad and Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sukriti Ghosal. Both have made promises of making the industries better.
BJP won Durgapur in 2019, with 41.76% of the votes. TMC won 41.59%. CPI(M) won 11.26% and Congress, 2.69%.
Translated from the Bengali original by Soumashree Sarkar.
